


Black, White and Red All Over

by JMA



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen, Prompt Fill, Slight Slash, Zombies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-24
Updated: 2013-03-24
Packaged: 2017-12-06 07:51:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/733197
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JMA/pseuds/JMA
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fill for the prompt: Headcannon says that when the Zombie Apocalypse happens, three people will be prepared: John Watson, Mycroft Holmes and Anderson.<br/>http://sherlockbbc-fic.livejournal.com/15253.html?thread=81560213#t81560213</p>
            </blockquote>





	Black, White and Red All Over

Shortly after Sherlock died John shot him in the head. That was weeks ago, and a mercy, but it's still the last thing John sees before he goes to sleep. Black hair, white skin and red, red blood.  
  
Anderson (and god, wouldn't Sherlock have laughed at this) is on guard with him in the library tower, along with Micke and Jacob who are 13 and 15 respectively. They are all armed.  
  
At 3am they change guard with a science teacher and two teenage girls. Micke and Jacob give over their guns to the girls but Anderson and John keep theirs and head down to the canteen.  
  
Last Thursday the first drop of government rations landed on the quadrangle with a note from Mycroft. It mentioned John personally and he became something of a celebrity after that. People still cornered him to see if he could get something special – food, tampons, news – from his 'government friend' and John still flinched at every request. He asked Mycroft for nothing; the only thing John ever wanted hadn't been able to out-think the infection.  
  
Anderson had been both a surprise and a blessing. He's been here when John arrived, back when they were still taking people in. Apparently Anderson had planned his stronghold ages ago, “Just one of those things you come up with at the pub sometime.” John could imagine having the zombie apocalypse conversation with Sherlock, not until after it actually happened.

 

Since the ratio of adults to kids was so low, the canteen was staffed with secondary kids, headed up by a couple of sixth-form kids who ran the place like a military dictatorship. John and Anderson took their trays to the back of the room. Ilsa, and Australian temp, and Ryan the vet joined them.  
  
“Family in quarantine got wiped out. Youngest son had it” Ryan shook his dark hair, as though he still didn't believe it, “The mum had a broken leg, bone right through the shin, and bloody David wanted to go in and help her. If it were left up to him we'd be eating brains right now instead of...whatever the hell this is.”  
  
“David's fourteen” Anderson murmurs. The look of pure loathing he gives Ryan reminds John of Sherlock, of him and Anderson, that a flash of black white and red flashed before his eyes before he can swallow the food in his throat.  
  
“So's a third of the population of this little hell-hole. Fuck! I hated high school when I was in it.”  
  
John doesn't say much. He doesn't nowdays. David may be just a kid who'd been doing ok in Human Biol before and most of his 'colleagues' down in medical (where they'd staged the school production of 'The Importance of Being Earnest' last year) were doing their A levels. A few adults like them. Too few.  
  
The kids made great soldiers though. John and Anderson (they say it like that johnandanderson the way people used to say sherlockandjohn – or just Sherlock and mean John too) went out on recon with some boys from the rugby team and a couple of girls who had just been teenage girls before. Before.  
  
They'd raided a pharmacy, Anderson shoving condoms and tampons down his cargoes for trade while John grabbed as much penicillin and ampicillin he could. A ginger kid was at the door. The girls were following John's direction and filling their backpacks (long cleared of textbooks and other useless things like that). Another boy guarded the back. Two more were loading up on soap. Clear.

Grocery stores were too dangerous. Zombies and other looters. The flour in the bakery was good.  
One of the boys was killed in an office while hauling a brita water drum. One of the girls (John didn't know her name but she seemed to him the kind of girl who hadn't gone a day without make-up before) hacked the zombie with the blade from a paper guillotine before decapitating the boy. John didn't know if they knew each other. Before. It didn't matter. She didn't cry. Nobody did anymore.  
  
Four days quarantine.  
  
Later John tried to sleep through the sound of someone rutting in pre-dawn dark. He's been in war. It wasn't quite the same. There was no-one giving orders. Nobody was in command. A handful of adults and a high-school full of teenagers – separated from death by the fences that, before, John's liberal friends criticised for turning urban high schools into mini jails. No, not the same, but achingly familiar.  
  
Anderson shifted on the gym mat beside him. John felt his back pressed against the only person left from that brief interlude in his life where he wasn't a soldier but a friend. Sherlock was brilliance and light. All he had left was a warm hand in the dark to remind him that it wasn't a dream.  
  
John closed his eyes. Black, white and red. Sleep.


End file.
